“The world only cares about—and pays off on—what you can do with what you know (and it doesn’t care how you learned it).”
Thomas Friedman
This is a quote I shared in “The Innovator’s Mindset” in 2015, and it is as relevant today, if not more so, than when I shared it in the book. What you can do with what you learn can create opportunities today that could not have been imagined even ten years ago, let alone before that.
Why does this matter?
In a recent conversation at my keynote at the South Carolina Learning Forward Conference, I shared my belief that the role of education is to help learners find a pathway to success that is meaningful to them. This is the driver of my work and beliefs for education, but there are a few things that need to be considered.
First of all, success should not be defined for someone, but for themselves.
Anyone reading this right now might consider themselves successful, and I could do the same, but what “success” means is a profoundly personal thing. In fact, failure to some could be success to others, and vice versa. Of course, we can guide students to help them define what success looks like to them, but ultimately, success is a very personal thing. If I do not have ownership over the goal, I probably do not really care about taking the journey.
But another consideration is that there are multiple ways to find success and live a purposeful life. As a child growing up, it was ingrained in me that college or post-secondary education was the only way to success and that if I didn’t attend university, I would be deemed a failure. Do some students feel that same pressure today? Absolutely.
Now I would never stop a student from going to college, but I also wouldn’t push them to go either. And the beautiful thing about a post-secondary institution is that you don’t have to go when you are 18. At that same conference I spoke at, several first-year teachers, who were 45 years old and above, entered college later in life. What success was to them at 18 could have been one thing, and decades later, could be something totally different. That is true with so many people, including myself. My goals and measure of success are much different at 50 than it was at 35.
One of the participants asked me a very thoughtful question and shared that she had struggled with the lost opportunities a student would have if they did not attend college. With great curiosity, she asked me to dive deeper into my position.
I never thought of it at the time, but immediately after the conference, a person I had mentored over the last several years exemplified what I discussed.
Justin is a good friend of mine. I first met him when he worked at Best Buy, and I needed podcast equipment but had no idea what to purchase. I walked in, told him what I wanted to accomplish, and asked if he could help. He said that he was a videographer, and so this was right up his alley. I had no idea what to do, so I trusted him with what I needed to purchase, and it has all worked great since.
As he helped me bring the equipment to the car, he asked if we could connect again so he could pick my brain. Later in the year, he came over to my house, and we talked with my family while watching a hockey game. I shared with him some things to consider for investing in Canada (RRSPs and TFSA) and gave him an investing strategy to implement in his 20s, which I wish I had started earlier in my life. I gave him clear guidance, and after about an hour, he shared that he had attended business college for a year and never learned any of what I was sharing.
He then asked me how I learned it, and I said it was from reading the book “Money” by Tony Robbins and then implementing the strategies in my life. I didn’t just learn theoretical ideas, but I implemented them. I did something with what I learned, and these strategies were never taught to me at any level of my education.
And as I have watched Justin grow, he has become a successful independent contractor and a videographer for companies worldwide, working with professional athletes, and doing everything in between. He works for himself, and his business has grown tremendously over the past several years. Now I couldn’t tell you if some of the “business” aspects of his work were taught in post-secondary, but my guess is that he would say no. Not only did he learn about setting up a business through online and AI searches, but he also developed his skills in photography, videography, and editing entirely on his own.
And what do his clients look for?
His credentials? His alma mater?
I asked him if he had ever been asked about those things, and he told me that it had happened zero times.
So how do they know if he is good at what he does?
They look at his work.
In fact, we do this so much in our own lives.
I have never asked anyone in the trades where they went to school, but I do look up Google reviews. I am sure they went to school, but where and how much it mattered had no relevance to what I was looking for in those positions. Could they do the job?
In fact, my hairstylist in Canada often talked to me about how he never went to school for what he does, but did pass a required test to get his license. He is excellent at his job (have you seen my hair?!?!), and he learned it on his own.
Again, I am not saying people shouldn’t go to post-secondary, but I am trying to convey that there are a multitude of options. Are we shaping kids to see success today as it was portrayed to us decades previously?
As Friedman shared, what you do with what you know matters more than anything. We have the opportunity to learn today from places that did not exist in the past.
Instead of being scared that that many will not go into college, I choose to be excited that more people will be able to find a path to what they deem as success than ever before.
The goal should not be to define success for others, but to guide them to define and find the journey toward it for themselves. The paths are exponential if we choose to see them.
